


The Gloaming

by TheBlackSaintAndTheSinnerLady



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game), RWBY
Genre: Eldritch-ness, Fairy Tales, Father Figures, Gen, Horror, Nice Suits, Partially Non-Chronological, Platonic Love, Terrific Violence!, There's always another secret, cosmic horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:09:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23191426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBlackSaintAndTheSinnerLady/pseuds/TheBlackSaintAndTheSinnerLady
Summary: Willow Schnee touches the mind of a Great One - The Great One. She inadvertently summons it to her; through old bloodlines, her ancestor's web of favours and a profound, superhuman love for her children. The Hunter of Old takes pity and humour and answers her call, compressing all its cosmic otherness into the human form once again, so it may walk Remnant at the side of her children, and keep them forever safe.
Comments: 26
Kudos: 104





	1. Chapter 1 - The Book of Revelations

Weiss and Winter were having tea when father introduced them.

They were young girls, with sparkling white hair and eyes of different shades but the same pointed cleverness. Curled in their chairs in the atrium, as sunbeams glimmered through the glass skylights to dapple the floor and the furniture in yellow. They both had biscuits and they both had warm mugs of tea (Weiss had secretly spooned several heaps of sugar into hers).

It was peaceful. Quiet. A robin warbled from a frosty branch in the garden. The snow shone like a great white carpet made of tiny, dissolved diamonds, or the microscopic fibres of a pale star. Weiss and Winter felt a bit as if they were dreaming, gazing over their winter garden kingdom from great palace windows, like fairy tale princesses, or at least important countesses.

Not real princesses, of course. Neither of them liked being real princesses.

The doors to the sunlit room opened loudly. Father entered the room as he always did: without knocking or announcing himself, expecting decorum from them but not from himself. The little girls, in their pale skirts and blouses, stood up and curtsied.

“Daughters,” said Jacques.

“Father,” said the girls.

Then they saw the tall and thin man stood behind Father, a bit to the right, as was proper of a butler or chauffeur.

He wore round spectacles. He had pale hair combed straight and neat to his shoulders, a hard, sharp nose, and narrow lips. His expression was impenetrable, and his suit was grey and immaculate. The collar of his white shirt looked uncomfortably stiff and starchy, and he wore no tie or cravat, which would usually be--as current fashion dictated--the splash of colour to his toneless suit.

This man had no colour to him, except for his eyes, which were unnaturally yellow and sharp.

“This is your new Servingman,” declared their Father, moustache twitching as he talked, waving at the tall man.

He wasn’t right.

Weiss and Winter stood still, staring at this frightening stranger, who--to their young minds--seemed somehow wrong and eerie. Like the ugly duckling, he didn’t fit in their world. He didn’t look like a human being.

Still, the girls curtsied. Winter managed a small, uneven “Hello,” but Weiss only made a sound in the back of her throat.

“Hello,” he said. He had a wonderful voice. Soft and resonant, without a hint of thunder or passion. Cultured. Disinterested.

Jacques nodded brusquely, then turned and walked out the room. Weiss glanced at her feet. That had been the first time she’d seen her Daddy all day, but he hadn’t talked to her once.

Winter was better collected, and more used to it. “Might I inquire your name, Mr Servingman?” Her eyes were fixed on his shirt buttons, far below his eyes.

Ridiculous. She was being ridiculous. He was just another servant. There was nothing strange about him. Winter forced his eyes up to his eyes, and beat down her fear with a very large mental stick. Just like Mama taught her - brave and defiant.

He hummed tunelessly. “Call me _shhhhhh_ , little Winter.” His tone was brusque, and the moniker he gave her, fond and endearing, became cold and empty through his tongue.

Weiss sat down and shuffled away from the Servingman, nibbling on her biscuit. Winter flushed red, and squinted at him, her fists like cannonballs at her side.

“Firstly!” She cried, and Weiss yelped and nearly dropped her biscuit. “I am not little!”

He nodded very seriously.

“Secondly!” Here she paused, and stuttered, and flushed with embarrassment rather than anger. “I - I’m afraid I misheard your name. If you wouldn’t mind, awfully…”

He cocked his head. “ _Shhhhh_.”

Winter nodded, and then blinked, and blushed, and looked at him a bit forlornly.

He stood straightly again, feeling the tiniest, most insignificant beginnings of a smile play at his lips. “Why don’t you call me Lawrence?”

“Oh!” Weiss cried from her seat, and both Winter and Lawrence glanced at her. She flushed. “Like the fairytale,” She murmured.

“The fairytale?” Lawrence moved like a drawing, smoothly, flawlessly, and pulled himself a chair from the coffee table. Winter blinked. Butlers always got the chairs for her and Weiss first. She supposed that was why he was a Servingman, and not a servant.

She sat down in her cushioned chair with a slight huff.

“Yes,” Weiss whispered, shy, and noticing how he didn’t move or shift or twitch at all, sat down as he was. “Lawrence the Vicar. From the fairytale.”

Lawrence made a flat sound. “I suppose those stories end up just about everywhere, don’t they?”

Weiss and Winter both blinked. “I suppose,” Winter said; she didn’t know what else to say to the quite confusing statement.

There was a moment of silence. A bird outside chirped gladly, and Weiss glanced at it. A little brown one. She didn’t know its name.

“Do you like Fairy Tales?” Asked the Servingman.

Weiss spun on him, and grinned, leaning over her armrest, momentarily forgetting her fear. “Yep!” She chirped. “I love them!”

Winter gave her a funny glance, but nodded. “They’re nice enough,” she said because she hadn’t read one in some time--father preferred books he said would develop her mind--and couldn't remember her opinion of them.

“Would you like to hear one, Weiss?” The girl blinked, and noticed again how yellow his eyes were, and how creaseless and straight his suit was, and shrunk into her shoulders. She didn’t say anything.

“I would,” Winter said after a moment, only to fill the quiet, which had suddenly become stale and gloomy.

Lawrence pursed his lips. “What sort? I’ve quite a few.”

Winter glanced at Weiss.

When Weiss replied, she didn’t look at the man. She kept her eyes on Winter. “An o-old one,” she stuttered.

The man laughed. Both Weiss and Winter looked at him. The sound was warm and human, and when they looked at him again he seemed indeed warmer and more human, his eyes softer, his suit more wrinkled.

“Those,” he said, “I have quite a few of.”

He knocked on the table with his knuckle. Softly, but both Weiss and Winter stilled, and it almost felt as if the room had leaned closer, and cupped a hand around its phantom ear, just to hear him speak.

“ _Kisa had a baby_ ,” he said. “ _But the baby died_.” Winter looked at Weiss. She didn’t look upset - rather more, she looked attentive and solemn.

His voice was like an instrument, gentle as a bassoon.

“ _Kisa goes to the villagers, and says ‘my baby’s sick!’_  
 _The villagers shake their heads and say to her,_  
 _Better bury your baby in the forest real quick_.”

He spoke sonorously, knocking on the table as if to music, his eyes placed somewhere above the girl’s heads.

“ _Kisa went to the mountain and asked the Buddha._  
 _‘My baby’s sick!_ ’ _Buddha said, ‘Don’t cry._  
 _Go to each house and collect a mustard seed,_  
 _But only from a house where no one's died.’"_

No birds sang outside. The wind didn’t whistle, and the house had fallen quiet. It was only the two Schnee girls, and tall Lawrence, knocking on the table, nearly singing, nearly praying.

_“Kisa went to each house in the village,_   
_‘My baby's getting sicker!’ poor Kisa cried._   
_But Kisa never collected one mustard seed,_   
_Because every house, someone had died.”_

Winter inhaled, slightly. She glanced at Weiss, whose eyes were big and empathetic, damp with sadness. She was leaning forwards in her chair as if to better catch every word he spoke.

_“Kisa sat down in the old village square_   
_She hugged her baby and cried and cried_   
_She said ‘everybody is always losing somebody’_   
_Then walked into the forest and buried her child.”_

He paused. His gaze was slightly distant.

_“It’s a long way to find peace of mind.”_

He knocked one final time on the table. The sound echoed. He blinked, and reaffirmed himself, crossing his hands over his knee. Weiss turned back to the table and took two biscuits, and Winter just stared.

Weiss handed him the second biscuit. He blinked at it, like he couldn’t quite believe it was there, and then took it, and nibbled delicately at it.

Tasty.

“Thank you,” he said.

Weiss nodded. Winter sighed lightly and sunk into her chair.

“What does it mean?”

Lawrence glanced again at Weiss. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

Weiss pouted. “All good stories have a meaning,” she complained, plaintively. Lawrence made a small amused sound.

“Of course,” he said. “But the story isn’t mine. I just collect them, I’m afraid. You know just about as well as I do what the story wants to say.” He paused, then smiled. “Maybe you can find out for me.”

Weiss nodded earnestly. “Could you write it down for me?” She asks. Winter takes a biscuit and munches, almost feeling like she’s intruding on a private, intimate discussion between the two.

“Certainly,” he says, and there is a sheet on the table and he takes a pen from a little holder. As his pen scritch-scratches on the paper, the sound even and coarse, Winter gazes again out the window.

A silent choir of birds line the trees. The clouds seem still. The snow is frozen in time. There is a little white mouse beneath a bush, standing on its hind legs, its eyes bulging and its nose shiny and quivering. It seems to be leering at Lawrence through the window.

Winter blinks, and everything is back to normal. The birds chirp and hop, the clouds slide along, the snow glitters and the mouse scurries away. But still, that image lies in her head. She knows she didn’t imagine it. Perfect stillness.

She turns to look at Lawrence, who’s handing Weiss the paper - her sister glares at it quite intently, as if she can uncover its secrets by intimidating it into submission. Lawrence’s smile is slight and subtle, but it’s there. Now he seems like a tall, elegant man, thin and well-mannered.

Nothing like the poor caricature of a human being he’d been minutes ago.

Winter decides then that she doesn’t trust him, and that she hasn’t forgotten his unnaturalness when he first stepped through the door. Weiss is just a child, and it doesn’t take anything at all to endear her to someone--even father, still--but Winter is not like her.

And she will uncover her Servingman’s secrets.

Lawrence glances at her and smiles.

* * *

“Tea?”

The thing cocked its head, leaned against the kitchen counter. “Yes. I suppose.” Willow raised her eyebrow.

“Are you even able to drink?”

“The last time I checked. I’ll need to return to human eating habits and such, anyways.” It paused. “You all still eat at the regular times, yes?”

Willow took two teabags from her pot and placed them in porcelain mugs. They were both inscribed with little apples. “Last time I checked,” she said.

It laughed. The sound was wooden. She hummed as she flicked on the kettle. “That doesn’t sound right,” she told it.

It grunted, annoyed. “Truly? It fooled your daughters. The youngest, anyway. Little Weiss.” It smiled a bit too thinly. “I quite like her. Did you know she loves fairy tales?”

She smiled in turn. “I read them to her every night. What about Winter?”

It shrugged languidly. “She kept staring at me. A clever child’s mind is not easily fooled. Especially as brave a child as your eldest.”

“But not Weiss?”

“She’s young. Her brain hasn’t stretched to fit its confines. But a child like Winter, old enough to think but young enough to imagine - those are always the hardest to fool.” It shrugged again. “Illusion is hardly a speciality of mine.”

The kettle started to whistle. Willow flicked the switch, lifted it, and poured the steaming water into their pair of mugs. She glanced at it. “Milk?”

“No, thank you.”

She proffered its tea. Slender fingers wrapped around the mug, numb to the heat of the porcelain, and he lifted it to his nose and took a sniff.

“Wonderful,” it purred. “It’s been so very long since I’ve drunk tea.” Then it reached into its jacket and withdrew a small, corked vial. The liquid inside was stodgy and dark, and he tipped just a droplet into the tea before he tucked it away again. A puff of steam rose from the mug.

It took a sip, then shut its eyes and purred. “Oh, these little pleasures,” he murmured, as Willow took a sip of her tea with milk, cream and a generous teaspoon of sugar.

She imagined it was better not to ask. She pursed her lips. “You mentioned specialities. What is yours?”

It looked at her and smiled warmly. “Incomprehensibly brutal acts of violence,” it said. “And I tell a fine story.”

She sighed. Of all the things.

It laughed. The sound was subtler this time. It sounded nearly natural to her ears, if stiff. As if he was someone who only wasn’t used to laughing. Uncomfortable doing so.

She suppressed a shiver. She’d given an absent-minded, unspecific comment, and now it was nearly indistinguishable from the other butlers and chauffeurs that managed the household.

What a creature Nicholas Schnee had tied to his favour.

She wondered, if she didn’t know what it was, and if she hadn’t brought it to the world herself, if she’d be able to distinguish it as something other than human at all.

It made a small, comforting sound, and patted her shoulder. “Don’t be scared, child,” it said. “Of all the things in this world, you have the least reason to be scared.” It laughed again. The sound was perfectly natural. “You and your children shall be kept safe,” it said. “As you wished for.”

Willow pursed her lips, and took another sip from her tea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the story 'Lawrence' tells isn't mine, if that wasn't already obvious. It's from the Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds track Hollywood, from the record Ghosteen. 
> 
> also now realise I start, segue and end this prologue with tea. oops. 
> 
> thank you for reading.
> 
> (please consider review if product was successfully consumed to moderate enjoyment.)


	2. Chapter 2 -The Book Of Revelations

Willow raised her eyebrow.

"You can't lie?"

Lawrence nodded, reclined like a prince in a soft armchair before the evening fireplace, and took another sip from his mug. He'd very quickly developed a deep appreciation for Willow's tea. He'd never tasted anything quite so wonderful.

"Of all the things," she laughed underneath her breath, from the armchair beside his. She was curled up on her side, like a lounging, drowsy cat. "How silly. Why?"

He hummed. "Lying, I'm not sure. My siblings and I all have our little quirks and creeds, but I've always found mine to be indeterminable." There was an amused twitch to his lips, and he flourished his free hand. "The  _ Truth _ , and nothing but."

Willow laughed again, mildly, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. "That's quite the line to draw in the sand."

"Quite." He shrugged. "I count my blessings, though. Kos, bless her soul, was forbidden from a home. One day, she simply grew too exhausted to travel further, and died with her baby still in her womb."

Willow's smile fell. Though Lawrence now seemed entirely natural, he was still - well, periodically tactless. But perhaps that had more to do with his life as a human than his life as… whatever he had become.

"Will it be a problem for you?" She asked.

He chuckled. "No. It demands a little more guile from me, on occasion, but I enjoy the challenge." He paused, and took another sip from the tea. "And it's... reassuring, sometimes. To have such a stout anchor."

There was a pause. Willow turned her eyes from the fire to look at him. He met her gaze with soft yellow eyes. "You're an odd man," she decided.

"Hardly a man."

She shrugged, smirked, and sipped from her tea. "Well, you're strange, but you're not  _ so  _ strange, actually."

He gave her a funny look.

As Winter entered the breakfast room, at her usual crack-of-the-dawn hour (a habit inherited from her father, and certainly not her mother), there he was.

Tall Lawrence loomed like a spectre, stood next to the doorway the maids would come from, with his hands held before him and his eyes facing straight ahead. He fit perfectly to his surroundings; a richly tailored suit to finely sculpted furniture, elegant spectacles to dainty cutlery and frost-etched windows, a refined and pale face to a refined and pale refined home.

"Good morning, Miss Schnee," he said warmly. He walked to the main dining table and drew her out a chair.

Winter narrowed her eyes at him.

He smiled back.

She took the chair, slid it a bit closer to the table, and rang the bell. Two maids came and went like bolts of lightning, leaving before her a steaming plate of sausage, egg, tomato and toast. And a mug of tea, which smelled wonderful, like spring flowers.

She tucked in. Lawrence returned to where he had been standing, across the table from her and by the servant's entrance.

She swallowed her first mouthful of food. "Isn't that the suit you were wearing yesterday?"

He blinked, and then glanced down at himself. "Oh," he said. "I suppose it is." Winter wrinkled her nose.

"Why haven't you changed?"

He took a moment to reply. "I seem to have forgotten," he said, lips pursed. "My apologies, Miss Schnee."

Winter gave him a weird, distrustful look, and returned to her sausage. He returned to gazing into space.

Eventually, she glanced up at him again. "What's your job?" She asked.

He raised an eyebrow. "Didn't Mr Schnee tell you? I'm to be your Servingman."

"And what's that?"

He shrugged. "Likely a man who serves." Winter scowled.

"And why do I need a Servingman?"

"Perhaps we all need a Servingman."

She sniffed. "Well, I don't," she muttered, and then she stabbed quite aggressively at her egg. "Not one like you, anyways."

He raised an eyebrow. "And what's wrong with me?"

She gave him a look. "You're weird."

"Am I?"

"Yes. You froze the birds."

He paused, and Winter cried out and jabbed her fork at him, leaping from her chair. "I knew it!" She yelled. "I knew I wasn't imagining things! You made all the animals freeze! And the clouds!"

"Well," he said, straightening his cuffs, "I'm sure it's possible that-"

"Did you?"

"Pardon?"

Winter jabbed the fork at him again. "Did  _ you _ freeze the animals?"

He paused again, and his lips twitched in displeasure, and he rubbed his eyebrows. "Yes," he sighed, "I probably did."

Winter nodded, grinned widely, and sat back down in her chair with a whump. "Then I'm correct," she said contentedly, more so to herself, and reached for more breakfast.

"What's that, miss?"

Weiss looked at him, and grinned even wider. Lawrence felt another sigh coming on. "I was thinking about this all night," she said. "You froze the birds, so you must have a semblance, so you must be a Huntsman in disguise. Father and Mama hired you to protect me and Weiss and baby brother Whitley."

Winter continued to look at him, expectantly, as he removed his spectacles and began to clean them with a small cloth. "Yes," he said. "I'm here to take care of you children."

"So you're a Huntsman?"

He, slowly, very slowly, cocked his head. "I partook in the hunt," he said. "Some time ago, now."

Winter nodded quickly, and looked back down at her food. She bit her lip. She plucked a tomato and popped it into her mouth. Gradually, she started to quiver with desperate energy, growing and growing, like a firework about to burst. She reached for her tea, and nearly inhaled the liquid, it came so abruptly to her lips.

She quickly lost her patience, and spun back to face him. "What's your semblance?" She chirped, eyes sparkling. Lawrence put his glasses back on.

"Oh," he said. "I have various powers." Winter, who had been so frosty, and so aloof, practically pouted _. _

"That's not a proper answer," she grumbled, and took another sip of her tea.

"I thought I was weird."

"Well, yes," she said, squinting at him again. "Don't you think I've forgotten. I still don't trust you. Not at all." Her eyes suddenly glinted, and she smirked. "Tell you what," she said, conspiratorially, "I'll forget all about that, if you can teach me -"

"What?"

"- Some cool Huntsman tricks."

There was silence.

"Cool tricks."

She flushed. "Nothing big. Just a... just some sword stuff, maybe, or how to use dust, or maybe even how to do a backflip -"

"I-"

Just then, Weiss tottered into the room in a rich blue dressing gown, rubbing at her eyes and clutching a teddy bear, smushing its face against her stomach. Her feet pitter-pattered on the floor, and Lawrence again moved smoothly and pulled out a chair for her next to Winter. Weiss started to clamber into it, swaying unerringly, before he set his hands under her armpits and gently helped her into her chair.

Weiss mumbled a bleary "Thanka you," and groped blindly for the bell. Lawrence dinged it for her, and in wooshed the maids, there and gone again before Lawrence could even make it back to his spot.

He blinked. Winter was, quite furiously, tapping the side of her nose at him.

"How did you sleep, Weiss?" He asked, studiously ignoring Winter. Who narrowed her eyes at him.

Weiss nibbled at a mushroom. "I had a dream," she mumbled, "but I don't remember."

He hummed in approval. "I imagine it was a good dream," he said, and Weiss nodded her head. Winter harrumphed and returned to her meal.

It was good she could be so childish near him. It was good Willow had corrected him on his laugh, and had had another friendly conversation with him this morning. He now-once again-appeared to be firmly human, and he doubted anybody would be the wiser.

Unless he wanted them to be.

Idly, he watched Weiss sit her bear on the table, making a small disappointed sound when it fell flat on its squishy face and then leaning it against the fruit bowl. Beside her, Winter sulked.

"How did you find the story, Weiss?" He asked. The little girl blinked confusedly and sleepily at him, before realisation dawned, and she gasped.

"Oh," she said, "I left it on my dressing table. Do you want it?"

Lawrence smiled. "No," he said, "It's alright. Did you read it again?"

Weiss nodded several times. "I even did some research," she said, slowly ballooning with energy. "But no one had even heard about Kisa or the Buddha!" Winter blinked, and then turned to look at him, her eyes narrow.

He laughed. "It's an old traditional story," he said. "Very secretive."

"Oh," Weiss said. "I guess that makes sense."

"And what do you think it means?"

She shrugged a little bit, and poked at her egg yolk. "I think it was about family," she said. "And saying goodbye." She bit her lip. "But I was wondering, If there was nobody who had not lost somebody, then why did Buddha only allow Kisa to bring back her baby if she found a person who had not lost anybody?"

Lawrence cocked his head, smiling, and took a moment to decrypt the silly, word-heavy sentence. "Maybe Buddha was a bad person," he said eventually. "Or maybe he was trying to tell Kisa something."

Weiss looked at him with her big blue eyes, confused and frowning."What was he trying to tell her?" She asked.

He shrugged. "I'm not entirely certain," he said. Weiss pouted, and went back to poking her egg yolk. Lawrence wondered if it was his responsibility to get her to eat.

Winter was done with her breakfast; she rang the bell, and again those maids darted in and out of the room, whisking away her plate and tea mug. The older girl wandered over to the settee in the corner, picking a book from the bookshelf and laying herself down on the cushions. Weiss continued to pick at her food, and Lawrence remained at his post by the door.

And so they passed the time.

* * *

Lawrence watched Willow put the children to bed from the doorway.

The bedroom was a grand, overlarge thing, distinctly ostentatious, but somehow still with the intimacy and messiness any young girl's home must have. Children's books were strewn on dressers, and scribble-sketches lined the walls, and dangling from the ceiling was a tremendous chandelier, from which hung row upon row of spinning, swaying, paper ballerinas. There was a grand, dramatic window at the far end of the room, through which he could see broad swathes of the night-blunted horizon, and many nodding trees underneath the brilliant stars.

Weiss whispered something to her mother, tucked away beneath her covers like a hobbit in its hideyhole. Willow laughed softly, and stroked her daughter's hair, her eyes filled with warmth like Lawrence had never seen.

It shifted. It felt like a stranger here. An intruder on a secretive, profound ritual, one it had no place in. It hadn't felt like this in such an aeon-not since it had stumbled across the Doll praying for its safety, or Gerhman, mumbling and moaning from within its nightmare-like a voyeur of the soul.

Willow had already read them a fairytale. From a small, wrinkled book she'd taken from her jacket, the edges frayed with love and attention. A story about how the world came to be; spilt from the split jaws of two celestial dragons, one dark, pouring out the monsters and the fears and the diseases, and one light, pouring out the animals and the hope and the warmth. Then, together they had created man and faunus, and had broken the moon to remind their children that they were never far away.

Lawrence had filed the words away in his memory, as he always did, even as he questioned whether he knew those dragons, or at least who they represented. Irae, perhaps. Or young Vin.

Willow kissed Weiss's forehead, and then Winter's. He felt the brief urge to turn away. Willow rose from the beds, laid side by side, and walked towards him and the door. She flicked off the light, and the room was swallowed with gentle darkness, the ruptured moon glimmering through the enormous window.

"Is papa coming to say goodnight?" He heard Weiss say, very softly and quietly. Over Willow's shoulder, he saw Winter abruptly turn away.

The atmosphere of the room, quite sharply, transformed. It had been warm, and happy, and bubbling to the brim with love. Now, it was tinged heavier, with the weight behind Weiss's words that he couldn't quite perceive, but knew was there. A sort of hopeless, familial loneliness.

Willow turned to her youngest daughter and smiled. Even from where it stood, and despite the deadness of his heart, he could see the sad tinge to it, at the edges and in her eyes.

"Not tonight, sweetheart," she whispered. "Maybe tomorrow."

Winter curled up tighter in her bed. Weiss's eyelids fluttered rapidly. Her lips bent downwards, and her fingers, wrapped around the top of her covers, clenched. Then she nodded, slowly, somehow unable to meet her Mama's eyes.

Willow, for a singular instant, looked near to weeping. "Goodnight, girls," she murmured, and they both murmured it back.

Lawrence stepped aside, and Willow walked past him. Around the corner, hidden by the wall, she cupped her face in her hands. Lawrence averted its eyes, again feeling that uncomfortableness strike through him, and moved to close the door.

"Goodnight, Mister Lawrence," said Weiss. He paused with his hand on the doorknob. His eyes settled on Weiss, and she smiled blearily at him.

"G'night," Winter mumbled into her pillow.

For a long, pregnant moment, he didn't move. He felt something unmentionable within his chest. He didn't so much as blink. As if he had been petrified.

He smiled. "Sleep well," he said quietly, and closed the door.

Willow took her face from her hands and turned to face him. In the dark, he could see that her eyes were reddened.

"What was that?" He asked.

She took a delicate moment to respond.

"Jacques," she murmured. "He used to help me put the girls to bed every night, always reluctantly, but he always did - then he stopped, some weeks ago. He hasn't seen them very much, since then. He was always distant, but now he's… worse. Weiss still doesn't quite - doesn't quite understand."

He felt a chasm open from deep within his chest, raw and blue. It sturdily ignored the feeling. The implication, should it choose to accept it, was… frightening.

"Winter does," he said softly.

Willow inhaled unevenly, and shut her eyes. "Yes," she said. "Old enough to understand, but young enough to hurt."

Things whirled inside of it, its heart. Offensive, alien things. He felt the momentary urge to say something he meant to her, or at least comfort her. But such things weren't on the contract, and it was reminded of its place in the universe, and it wrestled back control of itself.

"I'm sorry," it said.

Her eyes met his. He could see she knew the platitude for what it was, and he could see she knew she would find no respite in him. It was a thing, after all, not a man. It had a contract, not a soul.

It, again, ignored the ache in its chest.

She pursed her lips, and in her eyes he saw a sudden triumphant spark. "I'd forgotten. I'm busy tomorrow evening. Could you put them to bed for me?"

He frowned. "I can't imagine you'd want  _ me _ putting your children to sleep, of all things."

"Well," she said, and shrugged. "It's rather inevitable, isn't it? You're here to stay. And I'd rather you be closer to my children than not." She smiled. "You told me yesterday that of all the things, my children and I have nothing to fear from you."

He considered her for a moment.

"I suppose I did," he murmured.

"And they did say Goodnight to you."

"They did."

For the third time, he ignored the unnatural, alien feeling such an acknowledgement brought to his heart.

This time, rather than sore emptiness, a soft and trembling warmth.

* * *

**lore on and of the Great Ones is ambiguous at best. predictably so, maybe, when you're writing fromsoftware, or cosmic horror, or (even worse) both. I'll most probably be adding tidbits I like as I go along, as I do here.**

**The lie thing (rather, the unbroken covenant) attempts to explain why Oedon is formless, why Kos died, why Mergo's wet nurse is a wet nurse, or why all these all-powerful eldritch entities can be killed by a naked man with a stick, or why they all want for children, and so forth. By nature, cosmic horror aims to terrify with the inexplicable - but this story is not really cosmic horror, and as such I'm forced to sometimes explain the unexplainable. outlining has already become quite blasphemous. forgive me.**

**Thank you for reading. please review if sufficient enjoyment was attained.**

**And considering the state of it all, stay safe. Call your mum, or something.**


	3. Chapter 3 -The Book Of Revelations

There was a knock at the door.

Jacques glared at it from behind his desk, and ran a hand through his dark hair. "Enter," he grunted, and returned to his work. The Stocks had dropped again-another Grimm attack at a mining facility, this one nearly catastrophic-and the shareholders were biting at the bit. Blasted animals.

The new nanny entered. A tall and solemn piece of work, dressed today in a stiff blue waistcoat and trousers, both subtly pinstriped. Jacques wondered if he should get the man to cut his woman-ish hair; it was somewhat unseemly, and these days he desperately needed the Schnee image maintained.

"What is it?" The question came out terser than he might've liked, but the work was starting to press down on him. All these expansions, and not nearly enough time, and digging the company from the pit his father-in-law had driven it into was proving to be a miserable slog.

The nanny didn't seem to mind. "Your daughters, sir," he said. "They miss you."

Jacques glanced up at the man, and squinted at him. "Pardon?"

"Weiss and Winter, sir. They asked after you."

"And?"

"They want to see you, sir."

Jacques grunted. He rubbed his face. "Isn't that what Willow hired you for? To entertain them?"

"Respectfully, sir, I'm no replacement for a father."

Jacques gave the man a look. Most servants chittered and broke under it. This one remained impassive.

Better than his predecessor, at least.

Jacques grunted. Again. "I've no time for the children, not now. Winter will eventually succeed me, and she should know how much work the head of the family takes on to keep it afloat." Jacques waved his hand at the door, and looked down again at his work. "Leave me be."

"With-"

"What's your name, man?"

The nanny blinked. "Excuse me, sir?"

"Your name."

"Lawrence, sir."

"Lawrence. You like your job?"

He cocked his head. "Well enough, sir."

"Good. If you like it, learn to obey. Get out."

The man paused. Jacques hadn't noticed the man's eyes before; they were a cold, dissonant yellow, livid in their colouring, examining him over moon-shaped spectacles. Jacques felt suddenly like an insect spiked to a corkboard, a corpse picked apart to fulfil the curiosity of something that existed in a place far beyond what he understood.

"I think you should see your daughters, Mr Schnee."

Jacques remembered himself. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. He was truly tired, if he could fall into deep, unnerving spirals of thought like that one. For a moment, he wished for Willow, or his daughters, but again he forced himself to remember why he was a Schnee at all, and straightened.

Jacques sighed and scratched his moustache. "As a middle-lower-class worker," he started, "I'm sure you believe that the running of a corporation requires little more than the occasional board meeting." He snorted violently. "I can assure you that the work I take on to keep this company afloat is more than you've done in your life, just as I can assure you the reason I fail to visit my daughters is not a selfish one, nor due to neglect, but rather to ensure their wellbeing. I do all this," he gestured to his desk, strewn with stacks upon stacks of paper. "for them." His lips tightened. "I'll start visiting them when I have the bloody time to."

The man stared at him. Jacques sniffed. "Are you satisfied, nanny goat?"

The man didn't react, and Jacques wondered if he was somehow short of hearing. His yellow eyes were dull, his lips were flat, no parts of his body moved in the slightest. More like a statue than a man, staring at Jacques. More like a photograph. Jacques shifted, a coldness gnawing at his spine, and opened his mouth to shout him out the room. But the man blinked, and then nodded.

"I'll tell the girls."

Jacques squinted, grunted, and returned to his work. The man left him to it.

* * *

It strode down the corridor, smoothly, without hurry but with purpose. A perfect form, with hands cupped behind the back and a stiff, straight throat. Eyes that were aloof yet gentle and charming, hidden politely behind eyeglasses.

Again, it felt a furious, seething scowl cross its face, and again, it wiped it away.

It continued on its way, calmly, comfortably, subduing the emotion in its chest and breathing evenly.

Its thoughts started to drift.

Again, it felt a scowl cross its face, it felt its fists tighten and its skin begin to itch, and again, it wiped it all away.

The girls would need to be put to bed soon. It needed to clear its mind, or its inhumanity would start to show through the cracks. Its anger, hard as it had been to stir, had always been the most evident, palpable feature of its inhumanity.

 _And_ , thought a small part of him, _I wouldn't want to scare them_ . _I couldn't bear them to be scared of me_.

He sighed. If only Gerhman could see him now.

* * *

"What did Daddy say?"

Lawrence paused in the doorway. He turned to look at Weiss, his expression impenetrable. She was tucked into bed, buried under several layers of downy covers, the top of her head just poking out to show a head of messy hair and two big, blue, hopeful eyes.

In the bed next to Weiss, Winter was rolled over with her back to the door. She was old enough to understand her father where Weiss could not, but she remained young enough to want desperately for her father's love. Just the same as her sister.

Lawrence smiled, unsure if it had stretched too wide again. That had happened when Willow asked what sort of life he'd led to become what he was now; it tended to stretch and twitch when he concealed these new burgeoning feelings of his.

"Your father," he said quietly, "is very busy right now. He's going to come as soon as he can."

Weiss fell quiet. Inwardly, he snapped the neck of a pig, and began turning back to the door.

"Do you know when that will be, Mister Lawrence?"

He glanced at her. She was sitting up in her bed, back straight and chin uptilted, her lips half-curled into the aristocratic arch her father wore. Her hands were cupped demurely in her lap.

Someone more like the daughter she thought her father would love better. Rather than the one she was, who would heap copious amounts of sugar into tea and dance disco moves to the rock songs she sometimes managed to find on the radio.

Lawrence felt his hand twitch. How long had it been since he'd felt that particular nervous tick?

"No," he said.

Weiss swallowed. "Do you know," she asked, more softly, less firmly, "how much work Daddy has?"

"Yes."

"H-how much?"

Winter had turned in her bed to look at Weiss. The older sister had the blossoms of an old, familiar wetness in her eyes, and opened her mouth to tell Weiss to stop, but found that she couldn't.

"A lot," he said.

"How long d-do you-"

"A long time," he said.

Weiss's eyes were glued to his. They searched and searched. And then, abruptly, came the realisation. A quick, violent thing, and he could see it happen in her eyes.

She slumped. Her shoulders, straight and trembling, collapsed inward, and her chin tilted downwards, and her lip quivered. Her hands, cupped in her lap, were now clenched in the sheets. "Ok," she mumbled.

Winter put her face back in her pillow. Weiss shook, and tried her best not to cry in front of distant Mister Lawrence.

He inhaled sharply, ground his teeth, then shut the door and knelt by Weiss's bed. He helped her back into the covers, patting her back, smoothing out the wrinkles in the sheets.

Once she was tucked in again, he took off his glasses, and placed them on the nightstand. He unbuckled his cufflinks, and put them there as well.

"Would you like a story?" He asked. Weiss nodded, sniffling. He could feel Winter's eyes on him as well.

He sighed, and ran a hand through his hair.

" _On Jubilee Street_ ," he began.

" _There was a girl named Bee._

_She had a history,_

_But she had no past_."

Weiss sniffled again, and burrowed deeper into her covers.

_"When they shut her down,_

_The Russians moved in._

_Now, I'm too scared_

_To even walk on past."_

_She used to say,_

_All those good people_

_Down on Jubilee Street,_

_They ought to practice what they preach."_

The girls both shut their eyes. His voice was somewhat like a cocoon, dissolving into the air of the room, warm and gentle to the touch. It felt like Mama's kisses on their foreheads.

_"And here I come, up the hill._

_I'm pushing my wheel of love._

_I've got love in my tummy,_

_And a tiny little pain,_

_And a ten-tonne catastrophe_

_On a sixty-pound chain."_

He hummed softly. _"Oh, look at me now."_

_"The problem was,_

_She had a little black book._

_And my name was written on every page._

_'Well, a girl's got to make ends meet!_

_Especially down on Jubilee Street.'"_

Weiss's eyes fluttered shut, and she tucked her cheek into her pillow. Winter curled up into a warm and safe ball beneath her covers.

_"I was out of place and time._

_And over the hill,_

_And out of my mind,_

_On Jubilee Street._

_I ought to practice what I preach._

_These days I go downtown,_

_In my tie and tails._

_I got a foetus on a leash._

_I am alone now._

_I am beyond recriminations._

_The curtains are shut._

_The furniture is gone."_

He reached out slowly, hesitantly, and brushed Weiss's hair out her eyes. She didn't react, asleep like the dead. He sighed.

 _"I am transforming,"_ he whispered to her, and to Winter, who watched him, half-awake, with soft, sleepy eyes.

_"I am vibrating._

_I am glowing._

_I am flying._

_Look at me now."_

He sighed again, and remained there for a moment, knelt by the bedside. He was reminded of other, earlier times, sat with Gehrman's abominable, irreplaceable creation, and combing her beautiful hair. Snow white, like theirs.

He sniffed to himself, and rubbed his eyes, and started to collect his things. With his glasses in his pocket and his cufflinks in his hand, he turned and rose. Willow was leant against the doorframe, smiling at him.

"That was kind of you," she murmured, eyes on her sleeping daughters, their faces smooth and calm in sleep.

He stared at her. "I thought you were busy."

"I was. Why did you tell them the story?"

"They asked."

"What does it mean?"

"I couldn't say."

"Truly?"

"Yes."

She gave him an amused, unconvinced look, then beckoned him outside. She shut the door behind them, and leant against the wall. He didn't, and instead focused on reaffixing his cufflinks. He still had work to do, after all.

"You didn't have to do that for them," she told him.

He grunted, finishing one cufflink and moving to the other. "They asked."

"You know," she said, "I didn't summon you to care for the girls."

He glanced up at her.

"We call you a Servingman, but in truth you're just a bodyguard, no?"

The hallway was quite dim. Little light came through the windows, and the lamps were low. Still, Lawrence decided he'd go walking this night. He missed the dark, already.

"The terms of the contract will be met," he said, eventually.

"But what you did just now for my girls," she continued, "wasn't on the contract. You didn't have to do it. You did it because you wanted to."

He looked at her. His jaw was wound tight, and his expression remained impenetrable and distant. He seemed taller, suddenly, and thinner, and his eyes, from a certain angle, appeared too large to fit his skull.

Willow met his eyes.

"What do you mean?" he asked, his voice smoother and colder than she had ever heard it. But she remained steady.

"I think you're more human than you seem," she said. For a brief moment, his eyes flickered with something she couldn't understand.

"The contract is all that matters," he said, but still her stare held his eyes, her jaw firm and her shoulders steady. Slowly, he shrunk into himself, before her knowing gaze. Suddenly, to her, and himself, he seemed more vulnerable than he ever had before.

"You shouldn't lie, Lawrence."

"I don't."

He stepped around her. She sighed, and didn't stop him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lawrence’s story, this time, is taken from (another) Nick Cave piece, this time Jubilee Street from the record Push the Sky Away. 
> 
> thank you for reading. please review if you’ve enjoyed, or if you have feedback on what (small amount) I have written. 
> 
> stay safe, still. new york especially is a frightening place, right now.


	4. Chapter 4 - The Book Of Revelations

Her eyes fluttered open.

She was on her back, staring upwards. 

She didn’t know if it was day or night. The sky was grey and featureless. There was no moon, there was no sun, and there did not appear to be any depth. As if the clouds were one thin, flat layer, stretched over the sky like a tablecloth, from one edge of the horizon to the other. If she looked closely, there were eddies and ripples in the flesh of the clouds. Movement and life, small currents and gullies that flowed individually. 

She sat up. She was in a field of endless white flowers.

They swayed and nodded daintily, on a breeze she could just barely feel against her nose. They stretched as far as her eye could see; a curving, beautiful plane of flowers, reaching forever and ever more for the edge of the world. In the very far distance, she could just make out a small hill, and on that small hill a tree, a cottage and a doll. 

Laughter. 

There was laughter in the air, bright and happy, and as she turned towards the sound she found her family. Father and Mama and Weiss and even baby Whitley, sat in a circle, laughing and smiling. Willow was braiding the flowers into Weiss’s hair--it looked silly, white against white--while she talked with Father and kissed him lightly, while Whitley gurgled from his little crib, a flower in his fist.

Winter started to cry. 

She took a step towards them, and then another, and then she was flying over the grass, racing towards them, and she rocketed into the arms of her mother and father and hugged them deeply. She grinned into their arms, her eyes scrunched shut and her forehead pressed tightly against them. They rocked her and laughed, and she laughed with them. 

Willow pushed Weiss to Jacques, who took her on his back and started to race about the field, the both of them cackling like witches, as Willow put Winter in her lap and started to braid her hair in turn. 

So, on that field of white flowers, Winter basked in the love of her perfect family.

In the distance, there was a muddied figure. She couldn’t quite make out it’s shape, but it was thin and straight, and it had the most beautiful, the coldest yellow eyes. She stared at it over her Mother’s shoulder, and slowly her smile faded away, and she began to grow cold. 

Her eyes fluttered open. 

It was dim, and she was buried beneath her covers, her cheek squeezed against her pillow. Ribbons of sunlight kissed her forehead. Out the window, the sun had just barely begun to peer at the world from beneath the horizon, shining softly over land and snow. 

There were tears in her eyes. She hissed, and wiped them away furiously, and buried herself back beneath the covers, shaking with anger, curled up in hurt. 

* * *

Weiss was the first through the door. 

Lawrence cocked an eyebrow, stood in the dining room with his usual posture and position. Winter had always been the morning-girl between the two of them, always clearer of eye and footstep at 6:00 in the morning.

He said good morning, and the little girl nearly managed to mumble it back, swaying like a zombie. He put her in her chair, and she rang the bell, and they talked a little bit--mostly about fairy tales and his newest suit, which was dark brown and tieless--as he waited for Winter, because he had given her the most wonderful dream. 

But when Winter did walk through those grand doors, she didn’t do so with a smile, or with joy in her eyes. 

She stormed in. Her scowl was heavy and her fists swung by her sides. She wasn’t in her nightdress; she’d put on a stiff shirt and trousers, and what looked like the heaviest shoes she owned. 

He blinked. He frowned at her, and she took one look at his dissaproving face, and practically sneered at him. 

“Good Morning, Winter,” he said. She brushed past him, and only when Weiss turned to stare at her did she mutter it back. 

She smacked herself into her chair and slapped the bell. She sniffed as the food came, and pounced upon it like a starving Hyena. 

He felt his hand twitch. _What had gone wrong?_

“How did you sleep, Winter?” He asked. 

She swallowed her food, and gripped her fork, and turned to him, lips tight. But then she paused, and slumped, and he felt the sudden, unfathomable urge to hug her tightly. 

“Fine,” she said softly. “I had - I had a bit of a bad dream.” 

“What?”

Winter frowned.

“Ah,” he said, “why’s that?”

She opened her mouth - but then she stopped, and shrugged, and looked back down at her food. “Nothing important,” she said. “Just a... nightmare.”

He stared at her, and tried to grasp what had happened.

He had given her what she wanted. He hadn’t touched Weiss’s mind, because she was young, but Winter had wanted her father to be there so very much, and had yearned so furiously for her mother and father to love each other as much as they had before - he had felt that much, seen that much in the snowy depths of her brain. 

It should have been idyllic. Her dream come true. 

“What sort of nightmare?” he asked, a bit faintly. 

She shrugged again, and poked at her egg. He couldn’t see her face behind her hair. “A lying one,” she said.

He frowned. His hand twitched again, and in the palm of his hand he felt the spectre of a hilt. Untrue? Everything she had ever wanted had been there, in the palm of her hand. He hadn’t tempted her, he hadn’t tantalised her, he hadn’t written her soul on a contract - he had given it to her.

“What do you mean?”

She glanced up at him. She saw something in his face--distantly, he chided himself--and she smiled thankfully. She held a profoundness in that little curve of her mouth, that was exactly like her mother’s, put upon a child’s face and eyes. 

“It was the kind of dream that promised me something,” she said, “and took it away.”

_Took it away._

How had it been taken? Had he somehow been interfered with, had his control over dreams, ripped from Flora and Mergo’s nurse and the Mensis brain, been somehow thieved from him? Had--

“How was it taken away?”.

She gave him a funny look. “Because when I woke up, it wasn’t real,” she said. 

Her food was finished now. She rang the bell, and went to her sofa in the corner, plucking a book from the shelves and lying down to read.

He pulled a chair from the table, and sat.

He frowned, and tapped his fingers on the table. 

He thought back. 

The Hunter’s Dream had been...

An oscillated dimensional space, certainly. Whether the title _Hunter’s Dream_ was fitting, whether the title _Hunter’s Nightmare_ was fitting what that distinction was, was nonexistent. He was the Child and Father of Dreams. 

He was the Eye over The Gloaming. 

Not _real._

Winter had found a crack in his dream. Winter had slipped easily from his realm to her own, as if greased. 

As if the dreams he had given her hadn’t been of the strangest, most powerful, alien sort, not the flutterings of an asleep brain but the birth and manipulation of a _world._

He realised something, paused, and swallowed. 

What would he have done if she had not returned? If she had forever remained in his world, apart from her mother and her sister? Asleep? What would that have done to the contract? What would that have done to him?

The small gift he had tried to give, stemming from his foetal love, might have been the end of him entirely. 

He sniffed sharply. He needed some time to think. Something tranquil, meditative. 

He glanced out the window, at the snowy heaps and hills, at the dark trees and the fluffy clouds. He watched as a small and black bird fluttered on by over the horizon, a mask grafted to its skull. 

“I’m going out for a while, Winter,” he said, and made for the door. He swung his jacket around a chair. Wouldn’t do to have it torn. 

She peered at him quizzically from over her book. “It’s snowing,” she said, and he grunted. 

“I’ll be back in time,” he said, from the doorway, and left. 

Winter frowned, and settled back to read her book. 

* * *

He felt faintly nostalgic, among the trees and atop the snow. 

The wolfish creature cackled and lunged, jaws a-slavering. Lawrence raised the blunderbuss and tugged the trigger, blasting the creature apart. It dissolved into a rather dissatisfying cloud of black dust. 

He hadn’t been a true Hunter since long past, but he still held an affection for it. Gehrman’s tired, blasted adages held a kernel of stubborn truth: _A Hunter must Hunt._

Half-attentively, he wondered if he was stuck in his ways, still bearing flintlocks and clockwork mechanisms, rather than magic, or sophisticated machinery, or even his true form. But whenever he’d tried other manners of violence, nothing had felt right in his hand - except these old and tanned wrappings, the heavy clunking of the cogs and the familiar weight of bestial iron. 

Of course, it had also been some time since he’d fought as a human. Not since he’d ascended to his current standing amongst the Great Ones, perhaps. Even longer since he’d fought like this, as a Hunter against beasts. It was nearly enough to make him feel young and soft again, like the man he’d been. 

Which was exactly the problem. 

He clicked his tongue, and spun to thrust his hand through the skull of another skulking creature, this one sculpted after a bear. It dissolved like the others, and he scowled. 

Where was the viscera? The grit? These shadow-fleshed things were distinctly frustrating. He grunted irritably, and gunned down another small wolf, not bothering to watch it dissipate. 

Even his irritation was an aspect of the problem. He hadn’t felt that itch beneath his skin since his transformation. Why and how had he been so quickly and thoroughly transformed?

Another darkling bear pounced at him, and we wove beneath it, and dragged his fingers along its hamstrings, trailing black smoke and severing the tendons, crippling it. 

If the wretched thing had had tendons, which it didn’t, and so it turned on him and swung, screaming. He ducked and grumbled, and thrust the barrel of the blunderbuss inside its mouth. The trigger was pulled, and it blew its nebulous, non-corporeal, smoky brains out on the snow. 

He paused, and sighed. This was supposed to have been a relaxing, meditative experience.

“ _Come along to home now_ ,” he murmured, “ _Beasties big and small, monsters one and all, come into my arms._ ” A short children’s rhyme, from old Yharnam. He had been reciting those stories more and more, recently. It had never been more than an idle hobby, only ever done because she’d asked, but now it had a... purpose. 

He thought of big blue eyes, peeking at him with _wonder_ , of all things, filling him with a slow and subtle sort of glee, raw in his chest. 

Which, of course, was completely against his nature as a Great One - 

He stopped himself short. 

His tall figure stood still, hair blown by the wind, eyes suddenly wide, shirt and trousers dusted with snow. Wolves pounced from the treeline, jaws a-slavering, eyes a-glinting, claws a-tearing. A nice, big crowd of monsters for a Hunter to sink his teeth into. 

Lawrence scowled, and above his head something opened. The wolves collapsed and dissolved. The birds fell from their branches. A father rabbit squealed and bashed its skull open against a rock. Its brains spattered the snowy carpet. 

Around him there was silence, and no life remained. 

_Every Great One loses its child, and yearns for a surrogate._

Lawrence tilted his face towards the unfeeling grey sky, and licked his lips. 

He wasn’t becoming more human, at all. Not really. 

He was only descending--ascending--further into Wonderland. 

Which changed everything, didn’t it?

* * *

When he came back, Willow was waiting for him. 

Momentarily, he suppressed the desire to turn the other way and return to the wilds. 

She was leaning against a counter in the kitchen (which was connected to the servant’s door he’d taken) chatting up the chefs. They loved her, he could see it; she was kind to them, and asked about their families, and remembered their names, and made sure their salaries were kept nice and beefy. She patted a swarthy man on the shoulder, who grinned, shiny-toothed, and hurried off to finish the batter. 

She saw him, of course, and raised an eyebrow. 

He cut quite the figure, he was sure. His shirt soaked through with snow, his boots glazed with frost, his hair a tangled, knotty crown atop his head. 

It was sort of fun, having a human body that could be dirtied and spoiled. 

He shrugged to her--she snickered behind her hand--and began to pass through the throng of chefs and maids, all hustling and bustling in preparation for the dinner that would follow one of Jacques Schnee’s grand board-member poker games. 

He bowed slightly before her. She flicked a fleck of fern from his shirt, and led him out the door to a quieter hallway, fondly carpeted and sincerely lit. She walked down it, and he glided alongside her, a respectful distance away. 

She looked at him over her shoulder. “Where have you been?” She asked slyly. 

“On a walk,” he said. He raked his hands through his hair, leaving it straight and shiny, and cleaned the dirt from his knuckles. 

“In this weather?”

“You’d be surprised - a bit of brisk weather words wonders for blood flow.”

She smiled. “You have blood, then?”

“Oh,” he said, “plenty. Of a different sort, but it retains some human qualities.” He smiled wryly. “Taste, for one.”

Willow didn’t so much as twitch. “Will you be serving Jacques at his dinner?”

He hummed, and flipped his shirt inside out. On the other side, it was a rich, sharp blue, and clean of dirt and snow. “No,” he replied. “I won’t serve him except when I have to. My responsibility is to Weiss and Winter.”

At this, Willow nodded. “You’ll join us for stargazing, then?”

He paused.

“We’ll be on the roof, you see,” she continued, “and even after the storm passes the gusts are supposed to be quite sharp. We’d be much safer with some sort of chaperone.” 

“Well,” he said, “surely you could stargaze from indoors.”

She gave him a disapproving look. “Now, Lawrence, don’t tell me you think stargazing from indoors is anything like stargazing outdoors.”

“Well-”

“No, no, you’ll have to come now.” Her lips tugged upwards at the corners. “I won’t tolerate any indoors-stargazing nonsense in this home. You’ll have to be re-educated.” 

He gave her a strange look. She smirked, and patted him on the shoulder. 

“Go get dressed properly,” she said, “then join us on the roof. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.”

* * *

This moon was a weird and glimmering phenomenon. 

Cracked along it’s left face, like a grandfather clock that had been smashed with a sledgehammer, each shard gleaming in the sky like a well-polished dinner plate. When he’d first set eyes upon its alien face, he had been struck with the sudden urge to float up there and dance among the chunks of moon-rock; still there remained in those cracks and crevasses a whisper of violet and deific power, left over from the shattering. Enough to tantalise and seduce a Great One like him, who feasted upon the bodies and brains of its siblings.

“What’re you humming?” 

Lawrence blinked, and brought his mind back to this world. Where the wind keened sharply, and the tall grass swayed like long hair,, and the stars were jewelled pins in the sky, nude without clouds. Atop some secluded part of the manor roof, with no bannisters or chairs or fancy wine glasses. “ _A secret place father showed me”,_ Willow had said.

He looked at Weiss, who had asked the question, sat beside him in her mother’s lap. She was bundled up like a teddy bear, her face peeking smally out of her furry hood. Winter was dressed just the same, as Willow had insisted, but with the hood pulled down - because _“Mama, it’s just not very mature.”_

“I was humming, was I?” He’d put on a coat, even though he didn’t have to, because he liked the children to think he was just like them. 

“Yes,” she said, “It was very pretty.”

“Was it?”

She frowned. “Yes.”

“Well, thank you.”

She grinned widely. “That’s ok,” she chirruped, and turned back to the stars. 

Willow smiled at him, and he couldn’t help the twitch to his lips. 

“Now,” she said, “Lawrence, isn’t this so much better than sitting indoors and squinting through a window?”

Weiss gasped. “Mama,” she said, “Mister Lawrence isn’t an _indoor_ stargazer, is he?”

Willow grinned down at her daughter and kissed her nose. “Well, not anymore,” she said. “I think we’ve shown him what’s what.”

Weiss nodded definitely, and Willow smiled again. 

Lawrence idly noted this was the only time he’d ever seen her _smile_ so much, with her daughters and the open air and the absence of ornament. Snickers, but never giggles, he had thought of her. 

Briefly, he remembered another woman--thing--he had first thought the same of, with the same white hair; he quickly throttled those thoughts. 

“Do you have a story about you?”

He stiffened slightly. It was Winter, not Weiss, who was looking at him expectantly, a hesitant, embarrassed frown drawn down her brow. She wasn’t sitting on her mother’s lap like Weiss, but beside her on the concrete, with her legs held elegantly together and beneath her. 

“Well,” he said, “It hasn’t been written.”

Winter frowned. “Couldn’t you make it up?” she asked. “Mama makes some of her stories up.”

He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, and gathered his thoughts. “I’m afraid,” he said, slowly, “that it isn’t very interesting.” 

Weiss patted his knee, and he glanced down at her. Her eyes were large and heart-wrenching. “Please, Mister Lawrence?” 

He stared at her for a moment, bemusedly. Willow glanced at him over the crown of Weiss’s head, a question, or a challenge, in her eyes, that same thought as yesterday - “ _you don’t have to, but you want to_ . _There is more to this than the contract._ ”

He sighed, the closeness of his surrogate children a gentle heat in his chest, and began. 

“ _There was a one-legged man,_

_with a love who couldn’t stand him._

_Because he had stained his hands impossibly red,_

_And he had kept the sickle.”_

Winter brought her daughters closer into her arms, and kissed the crowns of their heads. Winter blushed, but snuggled deeper into her mother. 

_“The woman died._

_The man was buried alive in his grief._

_He was filled with mania,_

_and ordered a replacement built._

_And beautiful she was,_

_And lovely she was,_

_But she held no soul,_

_And she was not the same.”_

He smiled to himself. 

_“Then God came down from the moon._

_She put the man to sleep_

_in her white-flower cradle,_

_and in the dream was the Doll made whole._

_But she was not the same._

_Within her breast beat a different, softer heart,_

_and within her head of china lurked something abominable._

_So when the man held her, he felt nothing but contempt."_

He wondered, briefly, if he should stop talking. That was not the end of the story, but from here it would become uncomfortably intimate. He glanced at the girls, and saw how Weiss and Winter watched him with wide, transfixed eyes.

His children. How strange and warm a thought.

_“The man withered in the dream,_

_and the Doll’s heart grew lonely._

_The dream became a cemetery. The world became an abattoir._

_The white flowers, when they bowed, now seemed to weep._

He paused again, just for a moment.

_“Then came a tall and thin man._

_He bore a red right hand,_

_but he was kind to the doll,_

_and asked the man about the past.”_

His eyes fluttered shut. 

_“He glided through the bodies of man, beast and god,_

_and when the time came for God, he killed her too._

_The dream became his, and he flew it far away,_

_the Doll cradled in his arms, both of which had become cold and spiderish._

_The one-legged man had died somewhere back there,_

_brought to his love at last.”_

He paused on his held breath, frozen like a photograph. And then he exhaled deeply, and he felt his breath mist in the cool, fragile air. 

The girls were huddled into their mother, their eyes soft and full of dreams. The mother, when she turned her face to him and smiled, was beautiful, and nearly proud. 

_This will change me,_ he thought. 

And that no longer scared him. 

“I’m sorry you had a bad dream,” he said to Winter. 

She blinked, and then she smiled. “Oh,” she said, “It’s ok. It doesn’t bother me anymore.”

He smiled back. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies this chapter took so long on AO3. lots of formatting issues, and then some assignments came and beat me into the dirt for a bit. 5 and 6 are already written and posted to ff.net, and I'll be releasing them here over the next few days.
> 
> lawrence’s story wasn’t in rhyme, and this time was my own. I tried to keep it as un-metric as possible, to distinguish it from the previous pieces. 
> 
> If you’ll notice, I’ve also titled this arc Book of Revelations, because i think that’s fucking hilarious. 
> 
> Thank you for reading! please consider a review if you’d like to encourage or aid me. 


	5. Chapter 5 - The Book of Blazing Wings

"Have you done your seatbelt, Weiss?"

The girl, dressed up stiffly and expensively, frowned up at him.

"Of course I did," she snapped. "I'm not stupid."

Lawrence raised his eyebrows, and she flushed. "I'm glad," he said, evenly. Winter snickered, and a small smile tugged at the edge of Weiss's lips.

Willow slipped into the limo. She had an exquisite ginger fur slung around her shoulders, and her dress was slim and blue. She crossed her legs, and her stiletto heels glinted in the light.

"Have you done your seatbelts, girls?"

Weiss scowled. " _Mother,"_ she huffed, "I'm not a _child_."

Lawrence adjusted his cuffs. "You could've fooled me," he said beneath his breath, and Weiss turned to glare at him instead.

"Excuse me?"

Lawrence blinked. "Pardon?"

Weiss huffed again, and crossed her arms over her chest. Winter hid her grin behind her hand, and Willow shared an amused glance with him.

Jacques was stood outside the car, a hushed, furious conversation hissed into his scroll, his hand wrapped around the doorframe. He barked an ultimatum, ended the call and bent into the Limo, adjusting his wrist-watch and tie, and behind him entered a square-jawed man with a suit and beady eyes.

Lawrence frowned at him.

"Who was that, Jacques?" Asked Willow. She hooked her arm through his, and he threaded his fingers with hers.

"Some rat," he muttered, "robbed half a shipment on it's way to Vale." He scowled. "The blasted criminals have been more prolific, since I bought out the shares in Gillespie Dust."

Willow stroked his arm. "Now, dear," she said, "this is a family night, no Business."

He didn't reply to that, sniffing and scratching his moustache. He turned to Winter. "How are your studies, my girl?"

Winter was stiff, her hands laced in her lap, her lips in a tight smile. "They go well, father," she said softly. "I've started on Quantitative economics now."

Jacques nodded, brusquely. "Good," he said, and smiled. "You can come to the next board meeting with me. Have a look at the backbone of the family. I'm proud of your efforts."

Winter smiled a bit wider and nodded, but the curve of her lips was thin, and she was missing that familiar crinkle beneath her eye.

There was a stilted, awkward silence. The new man shifted in his seat and slapped the driver-passenger partition, and the Limo purred to a start. Jacques clapped the man on the shoulder.

"Mr Taka," he said. "Our new bodyguard."

Willow frowned, and Lawrence raised an eyebrow - not that Jacques paid heed to the latter, of course.

"Why do we have need of a bodyguard?"

"Oh!" Snorted Jacques, "nothing particular. Only as… precaution. The times are changing. The greater we become, the more enemies we garner."

Willow's frown deepened. "There's nothing that's particularly threatening to us, I'd hope?"

Jacques nodded reassuringly. "No, nothing to do with us at all." Lawrence hummed, and Jacques blinked, and squinted at him, as if he'd only now seen him. He turned to Willow. "The Nanny?" He asked, and Willow smiled agreeably.

"Well," she said, "you brought your protection, and I've brought mine."

* * *

The fat man sang his heart out.

The Atlas Grand Music Hall: social crux of the upper-crust and the enlightened, the rich and the cultured. Each gathering, each dinner party, each celebration and parlay of the Atlesian bourgeoisie would pass through this building, at least briefly.

It wasn't about the music, of course. It wasn't about the voice of the soloist or the unity of the choir or even the storied musical history of the piece - it was about the image.

Remnant had a rich oratory musical culture, stemming from times when their ancestors would sing communally to ward off fear. They would sing around bonfires, they would sing at weddings, they would sing at funerals, they would sing at parties. And though solo voice and choir pieces had mostly gone out of fashion, they remained esteemed, and quite intellectual.

So the Atlas Grand Music Hall was the cultural centre of Atlas - the gleaming jewel of the city perched atop the clouds.

Its insides were, of course, just as magnificent as its outsides, draped in blue velvet and gold engraving and all the rich niceties the upper stratum of Atlas could afford. The seats were cushioned and leather, sculpted delicately for each pedigreed, aristocratic bottom.

And beneath them on the stage, the fat man sang, his arm outstretched and trembling, his eyes wide and moist, his throat shaking under the might of his breath.

Weiss slumped further into her chair besides him. It wasn't _prominent_ , or even a particularly noticeable movement of her shoulders; to the many, she sat as prim and straight as ever, the second Schnee heiress, statuesque in her dignity. But to him, who had raised and loved her for years, who had grown very, very used to her moods, she might as well have shrieked and started climbing up the walls.

He leant close to her, as if he was slouching over his armrest. "What," he whispered, "isn't this thrilling?"

She squinted at him out the corner of her eyes.

"Why yes," she murmured, "it's very interesting. I adore Mr Antony's work."

"Antonio."

"What?"

"His name is Antonio."

She flushed. "I knew that."

"Well," he said, "why don't you serve me the rest of your spiel? Just for good measure?" She glanced up at him and grinned lightly.

"Obviously," she said, uptilting her nose and sniffing pompously, "Mr _Antonio_ is one of the most prominent aural performers in the contemporary classical music scene, a name that even the most _casual_ purveyors of the art would recognise. His treatment of the classical texts and melodies, especially in the clear, glasslike quality of his timbre and his incredibly precise delivery of both traditional vowel sounds and hard consonants, is nothing short of superb."

He nodded appreciatively. "Very impressive," he murmured. "Superb elocution _._ I especially like the bit where you praise the astounding floppiness of his jowls."

Indeed, as the man shook on a tremendous vibrato note, his jowls jiggled, like two enormous, saggy breasts.

Weiss gasped and slapped his arm. " _Lawrence!_ " She hissed, grinning "you can't _say_ that."

"Mhm," he said, "I imagine I could pinch them and lift them above his head, and they'd simply elongate, like melted cheese."

Weiss burst into stifled giggles; she clapped a hand over her mouth as Willow glanced at them and raised an eyebrow, Jacques deep in conversation with the suited man on his right.

"I hope you aren't mocking the man for his appearance," murmured Willow, "that would be terribly cruel, and altogether-"

There was a distant, familiar click, and Lawrence glanced at the stage.

And then Mr Antonio was blown off the stage.

For an instant the room was petrified. A cloud of blood suspended in the air, the jowled man's body-now missing half a head-nearly serene as it toppled forwards from the stage, his limp arms akimbo.

Then came the screaming. Confused and frightened screaming, and curses, and sudden pleas for help, and flailing limbs and scrabbling fingers. The stage doors burst inwards, shattered from their hinges, and men and women in white vests and masks flooded outwards, pointing guns and bellowing orders.

It was an enormous, frantic racket. The noises of the slaughterhouse, Lawrence remembered fondly; the _barks_ of dogs, the _spattering_ of blood, the _thunks_ of bullets and the _squeals_ of man and beast alike.

Weiss was frozen in her chair, like a quivering rabbit under burning headlights, her eyes full of frightened tears. He picked her up and held her firmly against his chest, as Jacques and Willow and Winter-who was screaming-scrambled for the door under the arm of that bodyguard.

He took another glance at the hall, full of horned men and women bellowing commands and aristocrats darting like terrified mice, and then spun through the door to follow Willow and Winter down the hallway.

Weiss buried her face in his chest, her small white-clenched fists crumpling his suit. He held her in one arm, and with the other he reached between the air, and drew his Evelyn.

The hallway was long and carpeted. Enormous chandeliers hung from the ceiling, their brilliant jewels twinkling, like frozen droplets of rain. There was a descending stairway at the end of the hall, and two open doorways that went right and left beside it. Jacques was cursing violently as they ran, pulling out his scroll and desperately flipping through the contacts. Willow had thrown aside her heels and hiked her dress around her legs, and then she picked up Winter and slung her over her shoulder, glinting with white aura.

A terrorist burst up the stairs at the end of the hall; he bellowed and raised his gun. Jacques stumbled and cursed, the bodyguard reached for his gun, and Lawrence raised his Evelyn and shot the man through the mask. The _CRACK_ was deafening in the hallway, and Weiss shrieked and slapped her hands over her ears. The Faunus was flung back down the stairs, his blood a red Rorschach pattern on the back wall.

They kept running, Jacques glancing momentarily at Lawrence with fear-fraught and grateful eyes. They reached the staircase, and Willow barely paused before hurtling down it, past the body and around the corner. The bodyguard followed with his gun drawn, Jacques close behind him; Lawrence glanced over his shoulder down the long hallway, and saw a masked woman with wings glide over the balcony with another, larger man in her grasp. They both burst through the doorway, jerking their guns up at him, and Weiss screamed his name.

He raised his Evelyn and they both fell, quicksilver bullets sliding through their skulls. Again, Weiss screamed at the noise, rattling off the chandeliers, and he softly rubbed her back.

There was a _click_ , and he spun; a lumbering hulk of a man sprang at him from the stairwell. There was, of all things, a chainsaw in the man's hand, rumbling and barking as it bore down on him like a guillotine.

Lawrence pursed his lips and sprung backwards from the stairwell-further from Winter, further from Willow-raising his Evelyn and placing three bullets in the man's unarmoured throat.

Aura, unfortunately, deflected the bullets. It had been worth a chance.

The man snorted like a horse, shaking his head and revving the chainsaw. The sound of the motor filled the hallway, and Weiss whimpered. Lawrence scowled. If he put Weiss down, he'd be done in a moment, but he was scared to take his eyes off her for even a moment.

The terrorist sprung at him, thrusting the rumbling edge of the chainsaw at him with surprising speed. Lawrence slipped beneath the attack and glided towards the man. He pounded his heel into the man's knee several times over, until the man buckled in prostration, overextended and exposed.

Lawrence drew Djura's Stake-Driver from the air. The mechanism clicked and whirred, the heavy, brutal tip glinting in the air as Lawrence drew it back and pointed at the Man's face.

He brought it down.

The mask shattered on the first blow, blown from the man's face like stained glass beneath a hammer. His face was heavy-lipped and dazed, and Lawrence struck him again.

Then again, again, again.

The man's aura burst like a vase. Lawrence grunted in satisfaction, and clicked the trigger.

Weiss didn't see what happened. There was a thunderous _BANG,_ and a squishy, squelchy thud, and then silence. She felt something warm and gooey run down the nape of her neck and the backs of her arms.

Lawrence grunted, stepped over the body, and darted towards the stairwell. He'd left Willow and Winter alone too long-barely 10 seconds, but 10 seconds too many-and he felt a stirring of anxiety in his gut.

He dashed down the stairs two at a time. It was curved downwards like a snail's shell, and he kept close to the inner wall as he skipped over the two bodies he'd left there. At the bottom it led into another hallway, and then into another stairwell. Willow and Winter were nowhere in sight, and his lips tightened.

There was a window that looked out over the night-smothered skyline. He moved to it, and outside he saw a crowd of clamouring, wailing people, and police tape and security guards lining up.

"Weiss," he said, "hold me tightly."

Weiss didn't say anything, her face still pressed tightly against his chest, her fists wrapped in his shirt. He shucked his jacket with one hand, and swaddled her closely in it. The cloth stuck to the blood in her hair.

He shut his eyes, inhaled briskly, and leapt through the window.

It broke easily before the Stake Driver, and he let the weapon vanish, its purpose fulfilled, as he fell one story down towards the cement. Weiss screamed. Glass tinkled around him, and he plummeted downwards.

He crunched into a bush of Lilac flowers. They clung to him as he rose, torn petals and jagged stems. He stepped out of the bush and strode towards the frantic crowd of victims and heroes, searching for two heads of long white hair.

A short, angry man barrelled past him. Lawrence slipped the coat from Weiss's face and wrapped it around her shoulders; she was still trembling against him, and he could feel a wet patch on his shirt, where she'd cried and cried. He stroked her hair, and slipped in between two arguing policemen.

Nothing. The hall loomed above them, bone-white and silent. There were no gunshots or screams that could be heard out here. Only the clamour of the escaped, and the distant screaming of sirens.

Nothing. Nothing. He shut his eyes, and tuned his ears to the voices around him. Arguments, confessions, threats, pleas, all the desperate sort of things that followed a catastrophe.

And one voice, rising above the rest, shrill, furious, terrified.

"No!" He heard Willow scream. "No! Let me go! Let me go! Please!"

He surged through the bodies, and was there in an instant. The bodyguard was wrestling with her, his arms wrapped around her shoulders, as she clawed at him and fought towards the building.

"Let me go!" She shrieked. "Let me go!"

Lawrence put Weiss down as gently as he could, then softly cleared his throat

The man turned to him, looked him up and down, and he paled. Willow shook him off her, panting furiously, but as she saw him she stilled.

And then she wailed, and ran at him, and fisted his shirt in her hands. Her face was inches from his, her eyes red and weeping, sunken, her cheeks pale, her face crevassed and swollen. "Please!" She sobbed, her face inches from his, nearly hanging from him, "Please! They have my little girl! They took her from me!"

Lawrence stared at her.

He spared a second to find the correct, human voice.

"Winter?" He asked, quietly.

"Yes," she sobbed, "yes, and _he-_ " she spun, and jabbed her finger at the bodyguard. "H-he kept _moving._ "

Lawrence didn't make a sound. His eyes were flat and cold over his glasses. His other eyes twitched and rolled rhythmically, pulsating, embedded in the lining of his brain. He wondered if the movements were faintly visible beneath his hair and his flesh, like rats in a bag.

He saw that Jacques was sitting on the floor, fumbling with a lighter. The man's eyes were glassy, and a fat cigar trembled between his lips.

He gently took Willow's hands from his shirt, and glanced at the bodyguard, considering. But he hadn't the time, so instead he turned to the building and began to walk.

He slipped his glasses from his face, and unfurled his cravate. He reached between the air, and the worlds, and the cosmos - into the Dream.

And out came the Beast Cutter.

His lips twitched. Humour was such an effective balm.

As he walked, he also began to hum, softly, beneath his breath.

_We suck young blood_

_We suck young blood_

_We want the sweet meats_

_We want the young blood_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for a while I wondered whether to cut this book entirely, but decided eventually to keep it. some action is good - and some reminder that Lawrence, while now a bit reminiscent of a human, is also altogether not.
> 
> the verse he hums at the end is from Hail To The Thief, specifically the track We Suck Young Blood (surprise). that track also works very well as a tone setter for the next chapter, if you're interested.
> 
> thank you to my betas, and thanks to you for reading. especially so if you decide to review.
> 
> hope you're excited for what comes next.


End file.
